Rhineland Inheritance (22 page)

“And if not?”

Jake opened the door and checked to make sure the coast was clear. “If I'm not back by midnight, you have my express permission to call in the cavalry.”

His first thought upon seeing the dark set of stairs leading down into the gloom was, this is it. His second, upon reaching the bottom stair and being confronted by several tons of bombed-out rubble was, this is impossible.

But Karl was already scrambling through a miniature hole formed high in the dusty scree. Jake watched him disappear. He called to him, “Where is your gang?”

“Opening passages elsewhere,” Karl replied. “There is an
iron bar across the way here. We couldn't shift it. Watch your head.”

Reluctantly Jake accepted the filthy dampened rag offered by one of Karl's companions. He tied it tightly across his nose and mouth and scrambled up and into the constricting blackness.

It wasn't easy, for the opening had been made by boys much smaller than he. As Jake inched forward, the light disappeared behind him. At times his shoulders jammed; it was only by sliding one arm down and lifting the other one up that he could make it through. The second time this happened, Jake was confronted by an iron bar slicing the tunnel neatly in half, and he almost gave up in defeat. Then he realized that going backward was impossible. He grasped the rod with panic strength, and wrenched himself up and around.

To his immense relief, the hole opened up on the other side, and Jake half-slid, half-dropped into an enclosure made from the remaining portion of a basement. Supporting himself on a fallen beam, Jake rose as far as the bowed ceiling would permit.

Karl turned and inspected him in the meager light from their single flashlight. “Where is your scarf?” he asked.

“I lost it in the tunnel,” Jake admitted.

With a look that relegated him to the beginners' ranks, Karl came forward, tore off a segment of Jake's shirt and doused it in water from his canteen. He handed it over, saying, “If you don't keep this on you'll be coughing your lungs up in an hour.”

Once Jake was fitted out again, Karl motioned him toward a narrow opening in the far corner. “We found this hidden behind a door.”

Jake took the light and followed him. Entering the enclosure, his feet scrunched on a sheet of broken glass. The chamber was very narrow and lined on both sides by floor-to-ceiling cubbyholes. Jake looked around in confusion. He
then spotted palm-size labels and corks amid the rubble, and understood.

“It's a wine cellar,” he called back.

“A what?”

“Rich people sometimes have cellar rooms for wine,” he replied. “The wine keeps best in coolness and dark.”

Jake used the flashlight to search behind the shelves, finding nothing but solid concrete. The same was true for the back wall. He returned to the main room and announced, “Nothing there.”

Karl had clearly seen many such dead ends that day. He contained his disappointment well. “The next one is not so difficult to reach.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Jake said, and steeled himself for the return trip.

Once out, they took a moment to replenish themselves with deep breaths of the chilly night air. Then they were up and loping forward in a crouched run, passing within three dozen paces of the stockade's lighted back entrance.

Up ahead loomed a building whose four exterior walls were almost completely intact, though nothing but a waste heap stood within. Once they were safely inside the shadows, Karl said, “My friends will help you check this out. I will go on ahead to see if they are ready for us at the next one.”

Jake glanced downward. A crater had been blown through the building's foundations. “You don't think it is here?”

“The same chance here as anywhere else,” Karl replied wearily. “If there is a hidden switch to spring the wall back, we cannot find it.”

“Why don't you call it off for the night,” Jake suggested. “You can start again tomorrow.”

“Because it is twice as difficult to move about in daylight,” Karl replied. “We will rest at sunrise.”

Jake watched him move off, then followed the three boys into the depths of what had once been a spacious basement. When he saw where they had led him, his heart began to race
again. Set in the corner facing toward the stockade was a second set of narrower stairs descending yet farther still. They ended in a dust heap, as the basement overhead had shifted slightly and sent a crumbling load down to mask whatever had stood behind. Jake saw how the gang had painstakingly cleared away enough of the bricks and refuse to expose what appeared to be a door. But there was no handle, at least not that Jake could see. Nor were there any hinges.

As swiftly as the darkness and the need for stealth would allow, he searched the high reaches for a catch or switch that might swing the door open. He then joined the other three at the top of the stairs, searching through what remained of the central basement for something that might trigger the opening of the door.

Nothing.

Jake paused to wipe the sweat that had gathered despite the night's growing cold, and wished he could risk knocking on the door with something. He wanted to hear whether there was an echo beyond. He sighed as he realized it was impossible, and went back down the stairs to probe once more.

A scraping sound signaled what Jake thought was Karl returning. Jake mounted the stairs. It was time to tell Karl that unless one of the other entrances yielded something, he was coming back here tomorrow with a chisel.

But two steps from the top, a blow to his head sent him sprawling.

“Well, well, well,” drawled an all-too familiar voice. “Lookit what we caught.”

“I told you I heard somebody messing around back here.” Jake instantly recognized the voice as the MP called Jenkins. “I told you these weren't no rats, Sarge.”

“So give yourself a gold star and shaddap,” the sergeant rapped out. “Did you get them all?”

“All three,” another voice replied.

“Bring them along,” the sergeant ordered. “And keep a tight grip. Those kids are slippery as eels.”

“Yessir.”

“I think the captain's coming around,” Jenkins reported.

“Not for long he ain't.” A pair of boots scraped closer, and suddenly darkness descended on Jake with a thunderbolt of pain.

Chapter Twenty-two

Jake awoke to find himself suspended from the ceiling.

The rope tied to his wrists and flung over an overhead beam had been measured out carefully. His toes barely scraped the earth, but could not bear any of his weight. As he returned to full consciousness, he realized it was not just his head that was pounding. His arms burned from being stretched out of their sockets.

“Looks like the captain's about ready to join us again, sir.”

“Give him another bucketful, Jenks,” the sergeant ordered. “I want him all the way round for this.”

A torrent of ice-cold water slapped Jake square in the face. He coughed, spluttered, and opened his eyes.

“There you are, Burnes,” the sergeant sneered. “ 'Scuse me for not saluting and all.”

Jake licked his lips at the taste of water, then whispered, “I thought we were supposed to be on the same side.”

“Yeah, I heard that too somewhere along the line. Guess all that went out the window when you started playing for the Germans.”

“They were prisoners,” Jake croaked. As his consciousness returned, fear gripped him. “They needed help.”

“They were enemy, Burnes,” the sergeant snarled. “Them and those kids you're always messing with.”

The beast of fear filled the room, dominating Jake's universe. It was not like the fear of a coming battle. It was the terror of helplessness. Suddenly Jake's own life had been stripped from his control. There was no one to attack. There was no power to draw on for defense. The beast slithered its hands around Jake's entrails and squeezed with the awesome power of limitless dread.

Then the beast spoke with the sergeant's voice, “You can't imagine how much I've looked forward to this day, Burnes.”

From the deepest reaches of his pounding heart came the silent cry,
help me.
Two words were all his mind could form.

“Now the first question is, what'd you do with the Kraut and his hoard? The second question is, what were you doing digging around here in the middle of the night?” The sergeant hefted his baton and gently pushed Jake in the chest, making him swing back and forth. “I'm gonna get the information outta you sooner or later. Just do me a favor and make it later, okay?”

Then it happened.

In a single wave that had no beginning and no end, Jake was enveloped in peace. Before and beyond his pain, Jake saw the room reduced to human proportions. The sergeant shriveled to an anger-filled puppet. The beast was vanquished. Jake knew that beyond the slightest doubt. Come what may, he was not alone.

The sergeant was watching closely, looking for the fear he expected his words to produce. When he did not find what he sought, he growled, “You don't think I'm bluffing, do you, Burnes?”

In a split second of piercing reality, Jake was granted a gift of sight beyond the coming pain. It was not a vision of the eyes, but rather of the heart.

“What, you think your little kids are gonna come running back, storm the place, and rescue you?” The sergeant sneered. “Think again, Burnes. We've got them all locked up.” He gave a slow, measured nod. His eyes never ceased their probing search. “Yeah. Ain't much chance of your little buddies breaking out and coming to the rescue. Not this time. You're mine, Burnes. All mine.”

Jake saw how the beast had come to feed upon his fear, and how the Invisible had now come to
give.
Giving was His very nature. Giving in creation, in love, in comfort, in peace. Even now. Even here. No matter what they might do to his body, Jake knew in that instant of overwhelming reality that the peace was his. Forever.

“Sarge,” Jenkins called from the front hallway. “You gotta get out here.”

“Later, Jenks.”

“Now, Sarge. Right now!”

He flung the baton across the room and stormed out. Jake heard him snort, “You're next, Jenks.”

“Just take a look out there, Sarge.”

There was a long moment of silence, then, “Who—”

“The whole blasted city, by the looks of things, that's who.” Jenkins was beginning to panic. “There must be a coupla thousand people, Sarge. More!”

“There's another group out back,” another soldier called from farther away, his voice high with tension. “And more showing up all the time.”

“They've all got candles,” somebody else called. “Thousands of candles.”

“Do we shoot?” called a frightened voice.

“Shoot? Are you crazy? Hold your fire, everybody!” Then out the window the sergeant shouted, “This is an unlawful gathering! You people disperse or else! Go home!”

“You are holding an innocent man in there,” a woman's voice called back. Her English was precise, though she had a heavy German accent. “Release him and we will go home.”

“I'm warning you,” the sergeant bellowed. “Disperse or else!”

“We have had enough of such warnings,” the woman called back. “Years and years of warnings and terror and screams in the night. Is that why you defeated the Nazis, so you could take their place?”

“Go home!” the sergeant shouted.

The quiet murmur grew in volume.

“What's going on?” the sergeant shouted.

“Are they gonna attack?” someone yelled back.

“Do we shoot?”

“Hold your fire!” the sergeant shrilled. “These are unarmed civilians!”

“Trucks, Sarge!” called a voice. “I hear trucks!”

Then Jake did too, and he moaned with relief.

A moment later the street outside was filled with the welcome sound of grinding motors. Then a blessedly familiar voice called out, “This is Captain Pierre Servais, liaison adjutant to the Badenburg garrison. I am acting on behalf of Colonel Beecham, commanding officer. You have Captain Jake Burnes in there. I am coming in to collect him.”

“He's under arrest,” the sergeant screamed back.

“I am coming in to collect him,” Pierre repeated. “Along with fifty fully armed men. I suggest that you avoid a major incident and release him voluntarily.”

There was a spell of heavy breathing in the other room, then, “Cut him down.”

“Sarge—”

“Do it!”

The rope was released. Jake's legs crumpled under him and he slumped to the floor. He tried to catch his weight with his hands, and gasped at the shock. Then he cried out again as the blood started flowing back into his limbs.

Comforting arms were soon there to support him. “Take it easy, Jake.” Servais and Sergeant Morrows lifted him in a double-arm sling. “Can you walk?”

“Maybe.”

They made their stumbling way into the front room. A phalanx of men were still pouring in from the entrance and fanning out throughout the stockade.

“Hold it a minute,” Jake ordered in a commanding yet weak voice. He nodded his head toward the MP sergeant and said to Morrows, “Let all but that man go.”

“But, sir—”

Jake raised his voice as much as he could, and called out, “All who will leave peacefully are free to go, with the understanding that if any of you ever enter this city again you will be arrested on sight.”

Morrows tried again. “Sir, I don't think—”

“Pass the message along,” Jake cut in. “Take down the names of every man here. They're going to be shipped out by the next possible transport.”

“Yessir.”

“See they are loaded up and escorted out of town. Remind them there are a thousand witnesses outside ready to testify.”

“More,” Pierre offered.

Jake turned and looked at the sergeant for the first time since he had been cut down. He discovered that he felt no anger. “Morrows, place this man under arrest for Conduct Unbecoming.”